


in another life.

by skeletonwrites



Category: Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cancer, Cancer Arc, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Mentions of Cancer, Sad, aelin has cancer, angsty af
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2020-10-28 11:49:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20778086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeletonwrites/pseuds/skeletonwrites
Summary: aelin has cancer, oop.





	1. the dying girl.

“I’m just saying — it wouldn’t be bad for you to live a little, Ace. Like, he’s a hot piece of ass, and —“

“Even if I did like him, which I don’t, I wouldn’t ever pull him into…this,” Aelin sighed and adjusted herself in her chair, wincing a bit when the tubing connected to her port in her chest tugged a little uncomfortably. Beside her, Lysandra reached her hands out like she could do anything to help her best friend, but Aelin merely shook her head and relaxed back against the chair. She adjusted the cannula in her nose and sniffed before letting out an exasperated sigh that had her lips flapping together and cheeks puffing out.

“You deserve to do more than just exist, Aelin.” But Aelin shook her head, eyes sliding to the window and staring at the trees that blew in the wind. Her eyes had filled with tears and she was doing her best to blink them away when knuckles rapped on the door to the treatment room and Aedion slipped in. Aelin looked over at him and forced a smile onto her face as her cousin dropped a kiss to the top of her head and sat on the arm of her chair, careful to avoid the wires connecting her to various monitors.

“What’d I miss?”

“We were talking about Aelin’s crush on Rowan Whitethorn,” Lysandra spouted before Aelin could even open her mouth to speak. She shot her friend a look and shook her head.

“I don’t have a crush on Rowan!”

“Oh, so his eyes don’t do it for you?” Behind her, Aelin swore her heart monitor skipped. Her eyes fluttered shut. “You don’t like his tattoo? Or his _body_? That unusual silver hair? His handsome as hell face?” She wasn’t imagining it now. Her heart monitor was definitely on the fritz. Her heart rate had slowly increased the more she talked about Rowan. It was undeniable, and her bitch of a best friend was doing it on purpose. “What about his accent? And the way he calls you love?”

“I think she definitely likes something that you mentioned there,” Aedion snorted, tapping a finger on the screen.

The monitor started beeping so hard that her nurse ran into the room to check on her, only for Aelin to wave her away nonchalantly.

“I’m okay, Lysandra is just trying to prove a point,” Aelin told Philippa, offering a weak grin. “I’m getting nauseous.”

“I’ll go get the Zofran, love,” she responded, ushering out of the room. Aelin rested her head back against the chair and shook her head.

“It doesn’t matter, Lys. I’m…whether or not either of you two want to accept it, I’m _dying_,” her voice cracked when she said it out loud, the words she’d kept suppressed _inside _despite the heavy truth they carried. Twenty two years old and she was going to die. “I’m not dragging him into this mess. He doesn’t even know that I’m sick. I’m going to have to shave my head soon. I’m going to have to start wearing wigs and then he’ll know and then everyone will know and everyone will look at me like I’m weak and frail and I’ll become the dying girl and I just — no. No.”

Her eyes stayed on her friends as her nurse walked back in, clearing her IV with saline before injecting another liquid, the nausea medication.

“Would you like something to calm you down a bit, love?” Aelin merely nodded and watched as another syringe of clear liquid was forced into her IV. It didn’t take long for the peace to settle over her body, for her to recline the chair she sat in and turn onto her side — away from her little family — and drift off to sleep.


	2. stage IV metastatic breast cancer.

The days following treatments, despite this only being her second round of chemo, were always brutal. They were nausea filled, the first 24 hours often leaving Aelin with her head hanging in a toilet. But she still had school and she’d be damned if she didn’t keep working toward her degree in the off chance that she kicked the cancer’s ass and came out on top. It wouldn’t happen, she knew her odds, but she would still carry on with life as_ normal _until she was no longer able to do so. 

“Are you okay?” Her eyes fluttered shut at the sound of his voice and she tapped her forehead against the wood of the library table before she sat up, fighting the way the room swirled around into a washing machine of colors and shapes. Again, she closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath, doing her best to anchor herself to her chair, the table, the room. When she opened her eyes again, the room wasn’t spinning anymore. 

“Yeah, just not feeling well,” she finally said, looked up into a pair of startling green eyes. Rowan looked worried. So worried that he knelt down beside her and allowed his eyes to search her face. 

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you really don’t look good, Ace. Can I take you back to your apartment?” 

“You sure know how to knock a girl off her feet, Whitethorn,” she tried to tease, but her tone was flat as she focused on not throwing up all over him. “Taking me home would be great, actually. I don’t think I’m fit to go to class or drive myself.” 

Rowan merely nodded and hoisted her to her feet, holding both of her hands until she stopped swaying where she stood. In truth, it felt like she was standing on the deck of a boat that was being rocked back and forth by high waves. Another deep breath and she squeezed his hands as hard as she could to keep herself there but at the same time knew that there was no bite to her grip. It was weak. She was weak. When she got home and looked in the mirror, she knew she would be white as a sheet: her lips would be pale, her eyes would be half glazed over from the nausea, there would be a thin sheen of sweat that covered her skin. Sick. She would look sick. 

“Aelin, love?” His voice was soft as he ducked his head down slightly to catch her gaze, and she forced her lips to turn up in a close-lipped smile. 

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly, nodding once as she moved to grip his arm tighter. She gestured lazily to where her bag lay on the floor, and Rowan didn’t hesitate to hitch it up over his shoulder. He hesitated even less to swoop her body up into his arms. Aelin couldn’t find it in herself to protest. Instead, she looped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her face into his neck, willing the scent of pine that tended to linger on his skin to ease the nausea and anxiety that coursed through her veins. 

~*~

“Are you sure I don’t need to call Aedion?” It was the sixth time he’d asked, and Aelin hated that he was asking at all. Her knuckles were gripping the white porcelain of the toilet so hard that it looked like her bones were going to cut clean through her skin. The awful hacking retching sounds were only amplified, ringing in her ears over the lilt of Rowan’s accent. She hated that he was seeing her like this. 

“No, no. I’m fine, really. Probably a stomach flu,” she sniffed as she sat down on the tile, eyes closing briefly before she held her hand out to Rowan. “If you could just help me up, I’ll brush my teeth and then lay down for a nap I think.” 

Rowan didn’t say anything, but pulled her to her feet and rummaged around to get her toothbrush ready for her so she would have less work to do. She scrubbed her teeth clean, forcing the acidity away with the minty flavor before spitting and immediately reaching for Rowan again. The trek to the bed was easier than sprinting to the bathroom had been, but she still couldn’t quite shake the way the room spun and spun like sugar being made into cotton candy. This, however, was far less sweet. 

“I guess this would be a horrible time to ask you on a date,” Rowan joked, brushing a strand of her golden hair behind her ears after tucking her into the duvet. Aelin gave him a weak smile and shook her head a single time. 

“It would have been a no anyway.” 

“Ouch.” He let out a huff of a laugh.

“It’s not that I don’t…that I don’t like you because I do. I just — I can’t, Rowan.”

“A few weeks ago —“

“Things were different a few weeks ago. I just can’t,” she said softly, her finger tracing over the whorls of the tattoo that covered the back of his hand. They were both quiet for a moment before Aelin shifted onto her side, closed her eyes, and willed her body to sleep. 

~*~

“I don’t get it.” Rowan was exasperated, head dropping into his hands as he raked his fingers through his silver hair. “I thought she liked me.”

“Because she does like you,” Aedion said flatly, not even bothering to pretend she didn’t. It wasn’t like she’d been trying to hide it before her diagnosis. Aelin had been chasing Rowan as hard as he’d been chasing her. 

“Three weeks ago at that back to school party, Gods above Aedion, we made out in half the rooms in that frat house. Almost - sorry - almost did more back at her apartment before Lys got home, and now she’s freezing me out. What did I do? I had to have fucked up somewhere and I want to fix it.” Rowan looked over at his best friend, eyes searching his face for some sort of answer, any indication of what he might know to help him turn his luck around. Aedion sighed, however, ran his hands over his face aggressively before laying his head back against the couch and staring up at the ceiling. His eyes followed the blades of the ceiling fan around and around and around until he closed them, taking a deep breath to calm his nerves.

“She does like you, man, she just…Aelin is… sick,” he said slowly, carefully.

“Yeah, that’s clear as hell. It took me an hour to get her from the bathroom to her bed this afternoon because she couldn’t stop dry heaving every five seconds.”

“No, Rowan. She’s really really sick.” Aedion’s eyes opened and when he looked at his friend, they were brimming with tears, voice crackling like an old, scratched up vinyl record. “Cancer. Aelin has stage IV metastatic breast cancer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I hope you enjoy this Rowaelin AU. If you like what I do, please support me by buying me a ko-fi at the link below. times are hard and this makes it easier to keep up with life.  
xo  
https://ko-fi.com/O4O3SCGW


	3. get used to it.

When she skipped into the lunch hall a day later, her hair had been cut and was barely brushing her collarbones. To the naked eye, Aelin seemed fine. She grinned and waved at people she knew in passing, thanked them for their compliments on her new haircut, and when she dropped into the seat next to Rowan at the lunch table, she seemed downright cheerful. 

“So what are we doing this weekend?” She asked, popping a grape into her mouth off of Rowan’s plate. There was an odd tension in the air, her friends glancing back and forth amongst each other before Lysandra finally opened her mouth to say, “You look amazing.”

Aelin flipped her hair over her shoulder and gave a cheeky grin, “It was time for something new, y’know?” She fingered the ends of her hair - so much shorter than it had been before. It used to graze the bottom of her ribcage. Now it didn’t even reach the collar of her shirt. 

“Why’s everyone being so weird?” She asked a moment later, nudging Rowan with her elbow. He looked at her and gave her a sad smile; there was so much pain in his eyes as he searched her face that she sat back in her chair, wincing a bit at the pain that splintered briefly through her bones. Rowan knew. She could tell in the way that he looked at her, his brow slightly furrowed as his gaze fixed on her body language. He was observing her, his muscles taut with stress. When she looked at Aedion, she saw grief and an apology in his eyes that so matched hers. 

“You told him,” she said flatly, arms crossing over her chest. It took everything in her to not jolt her chair away from Rowan, so difficult to not put distance between their bodies. Aelin ran her tongue over her teeth and fixated her gaze on the table. 

“Aelin -”

“It was my thing to tell when I was ready. Because I don’t want to be looked at like that,” she hissed sharply, her words slicing through his skin like the sharp edge of a dagger. Never in her life had she been weak, had she been looked down upon. But now Rowan was looking at her like she was made of glass. Now, had she decided to attempt a tumble in the sheets, he would touch her like she would break at any given moment. “Are we going out tomorrow or not?”

“Is a hike really a good idea?” Lysandra said slowly, reaching across the table to touch Aelin’s hand. Aelin looked at them with incredulity on her face as Dorian and Fenrys sat down at the table. 

“A hike would be great. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” Aelin waved at Fenrys and Dorian before walking away, stumbling slightly which had Rowan bolting over to catch her. She jerked away, however, shaking her head and insisting she was fine, but he wasn’t having it. 

“Let me take you home, love. Please.” 

“Fine,” she agreed, begrudgingly. Rowan took her backpack from her shoulder and slung it over his own, carefully lacing his fingers with hers as they walked out of the cafeteria. Aelin didn’t object, instead sighed nudged her face against his shoulder while they walked. 

When they got to his truck, he opened the door for her and tossed her bag onto the floorboard. Gripping the door handle, she went to climb into the truck only to be stopped by his hands tugging slightly on her waist. 

“Ace,” he whispered, turning her to face him. Eyes lined with silver, she met his gaze for half a second. It was all she could take before looking away, eyes fixating on the many buildings that made up the UT campus. “Why didn’t you just tell me? Why try to push me away?” His voice was tinged with pain and anger the way a bike chain is tinged with rust. 

“Because what’s the point Rowan? It doesn’t matter that I like you. It doesn’t matter that you’re into me. I’m not going to…look like this for much longer. I’m going to be pale and weak and sick and soon enough on oxygen full time. I’m going to need help doing everything to be a_ normal _person. I am going to die -”

“Don’t say that,” his voice came out sharper than he intended, throwing the dagger she’d thrown at him right back. Aelin’s eyelids pressed together, a sigh escaping her lips. 

“Don’t be stupid, Rowan,” she shot back, meeting his gaze. “I’m going to die. And then what? You have a dead girlfriend and a heartbreak that you can’t come back from? Gods above, no. No. No.”

Rowan took her face in his palms, ever so gently turning her face to look at him. Aelin licked her lips and shook her head as a tear slipped down her cheeks, momentarily catching in her lashes and splitting into two drops instead of just one. 

“Stop saying that,” he said again, lips grazing over the streams her tears had left behind. 

“Why? It’s going to happen!” Aelin rested her forehead against his chin, finger tapping against his chest. They’d been playing this game for so long, had spent so much time mindlessly flirting and stealing kisses in dark rooms at parties for months now. Months of her sitting in his lap and playing with his hair, months of drunken confessions and hook ups that always got interrupted when Rowan had his shirt off and his hands on her hot skin. “I’m going to die and everyone would be better off just getting used to it. So please, Rowan. Please. Just take me home.” 

~*~

When Rowan and Aedion rushed _inside _the girl’s apartment the next morning, he could hear her sobs despite the bedroom door being closed. Lysandra was sitting at the bar with her head in her hands, dark curls falling into her face. Despite his girlfriend, Aedion ran to Aelin’s room immediately and went for the door, jiggling the handle to no avail. Aelin had locked herself in. 

Lysandra had called them ten minutes ago when she woke up to Aelin crying, to Aelin throwing things around her room while she screamed. Two of their neighbors had been over to check on everything, make sure they were safe. Both of the tenants from the apartments on either side of them had left feeling pity toward the girl with fire in her heart when Lysandra had apologized for Aelin’s outburst, she’d been diagnosed with cancer and wasn’t handling it well. 

“Fireheart? It’s me. It’s just me.”

“Go AWAY!” The complete animalistic and raw nature of her voice sent a shudder down Rowan’s spine. Aedion stumbled back a step from the door and looked to Lysandra who shook her head. 

“I don’t know. I don’t know, she won’t let me in.” 

Aelin wasn’t letting anyone in, but Rowan took a stab at it anyway, approaching the door like it was a scared animal. Thundering in his chest, his heart was all he could hear or feel as he rapped his knuckles on her door. 

“Aelin, love?” Inside, her sobbing stuttered and vaguely he heard her sniffle, then shifting around. 

“Rowan?” Not so muffled, it appeared her voice was just on the other side of the door. Rowan glanced over his shoulder at Aedion and Lysandra before turning back to the door. “I don’t want you to see me like this.” The confession was harder to hear, a soft thud on the other side of the wall telling him that she’d likely rested her forehead against the door or the wall nearby. 

“Please, love. Let me help you.” 

Rowan wasn’t at all prepared for the devastation that was written all over her face when the lock turned and the door was pulled open enough for him to slip inside. Aelin’s face was red and puffy, the marks of her tears somehow visible over her rosy cheeks despite no makeup residue on her face. The room behind her was a mess of papers and broken knick-knacks but that wasn’t what made his heart cleave in two. 

It was that when she presented her palm to him after dragging her fingers through her hair, dull golden strands lay twisted and clumped around her fingers. Not a little hair. A lot of it. And as she rested her forehead against his chest and started so outright sob again, he started to shed tears, too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I hope you enjoy this Rowaelin AU. If you like what I do, please support me by buying me a ko-fi at the link below. times are hard and this makes it easier to keep up with life.  
xo  
https://ko-fi.com/O4O3SCGW


	4. i just want to be with her.

It took what felt like forever, but Rowan had somehow managed to calm Aelin down enough that she fell asleep with her face pressed to his neck. They sat on the couch, his arms wrapped around her to hold her steady, one of her hands flat on his chest and the other nestled behind his back. He couldn’t imagine she was too comfortable with her arm twisted behind him, but because it had taken hours to soothe her to sleep moving her seemed to big a risk.

“You know why she started to pretend she isn’t interested?” Aedion’s voice startled him a bit, seeing how nobody had spoken for at least an hour. Despite the slight racing to his heart now, he looked over to him and shook his head. Yes, because she had cancer, but the way the question was posed seemed to indicate that there was more to the story. “I think a big part of it is insecurity. Aelin has always… even if she wasn’t the most confident person in the room she could trick you into thinking that she was. But now, something has made her confidence falter so much that she thinks that because she’ll have a shaved head and be wearing wigs that it’ll be too much for you. She…” Aedion paused, taking a deep breath and looking to the ceiling for a moment before looking at his palms. He was eyeing them with a serious intensity, brow furrowed and blue eyes shining with tears. When he started to speak again, his voice was thick. “She is so godsdamn sure that she’s going to die that she would rather just be alone than put you through the possibility.”

Rowan looked down at Aelin, taking in her hair and how thinned out it was becoming. In some places, from how hard she had been panicking that it was coming out at all, there were small bald spots where so much had come out at once when her fingers tugged through. Her cheeks were flushed even in her sleep, and when he looked closer at her face he realized her eyelashes and eyebrows were beginning to thin out, too. There were three eyelashes clinging to her cheeks, one dangling off the tip of her nose that he carefully swiped away with a gentle finger.

“I just want to be with her,” he finally said, still gazing down at the woman in his arms that, despite everything, was still so, so beautiful to him. “I want to be there for her. I have been in love with her probably since the day I met her. She pissed me off so much those first few months with her arrogance and loud mouth,” a ghost of a smile teased his lips, “but I didn’t want to — I couldn’t stay away. I don’t want to stay away. So she can try to keep me at arms length but it won’t work.”

Judging by the way her lashes fluttered and the single tear that slipped down her cheek, he knew she had heard everything. So he pressed a kiss to her head and stood with her in his arms and carried her off to bed.

~*~

“Are you sure?” Rowan stood behind Aelin, who sat on a stool in the bathroom with her hands folded in her lap. She nodded, but the tears in her eyes betrayed her slightly. It was a big deal, the hair. Rowan felt like it was probably that way for all chemo patients, but Aelin had always taken such pride in her long golden hair that even cutting it to her shoulders had been a red flag of sorts. She never would have done it if she didn’t have to, so now that Rowan was standing behind her with a pair of electric clippers in his hands, he knew the weight of it. He could see it resting on her shoulders as she fingers the ends of what hair she had left.

To be truthful, if she wore hats every day she would still have a bit of mileage left. But she didn’t want to, she insisted. She wanted to get it over with, she didn’t want to stare at herself in the mirror and see what damage it was doing to her, so she’d handed Rowan the clippers and whispered a broken plea for help. It was impossible for him to say no.

“Yes,” she finally said, sniffing and wiping her nose with the back of her hand. She wasn’t wearing a shirt, just a bra to make brushing the fallen hair off her body easier. Despite her chemo treatments being relatively fresh, he still swore that her bones were more prominent and it chipped further away at his heart.

When she nodded again, he took a deep breath and turned on the clippers. Her hair right now was cut to her chin to make it easier to shave off, to make the buzz cut that was to come go smoother. Carefully and slowly, Rowan brought the clippers to her head and began to shave it all away. Each time his eyes met hers in the mirror, she tried to smile but mostly failed. It was a sad smile, but there was still some level of thanks twined into it.

When he finally finished, he turned off the clippers and lay them on the bathroom counter and used a towel to brush the stray hair from her body. She sighed, and in it was so the heaviest heartbreak Rowan had ever heard contained in one gust of air. She ran her hands over the top of her head which, until she shaved it closer with a razor, was a buzz cut that felt so soft beneath her fingertips. Rowan watched her quietly, letting her have this moment to herself and his eyes fell back to the clippers on the counter. While he eyes were still closed, he picked them up, lifted them to his shoulder-length hair and flipped the switch on.

~*~

“Rowan!” She tried to get it out before he started to glide the clippers over his hair but the effort was futile, the damage was done. His beautiful silver hair was falling to the floor at their feet as he continued to shave his head while she watched half in horror.

Until she started laughing because he paused when he had little more than a mullet and it was too funny to not laugh.

“Oh my gods,” she mumbled when he finished, reaching up to run her hair over the top of his buzzed hair that matched hers except for color. “What did you do that for?”

“Because you’re not alone,” he said simply with a shrug. “I’m not going to let you try to be anymore.”

It was the one thing Rowan could have said to comfort her, that she wasn’t alone. Because she tended to try to handle everything herself. The grief of losing her parents, the grief and heavy weight of having cancer. Everything she had ever done she had convinced herself that because the majority of her family was dead that it meant she had to carry the burden of everything alone. But here was Rowan, shaved head and all, telling her that she wasn’t, that she didn’t have to be.

It was an easy decision when she rocked up on her toes and greeted his lips with a soft and sweet kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Follow me on Tumblr!](https://www.highqueenofelfhame.tumblr.com)   
[Commission hand lettering from me!](https://highqueenofelfhame.tumblr.com/post/189073567387/commission-me-to-make-u-a-handlettered-doodle-it)


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